W00T! Nothing exploded! Another Evergreen migration.

Congrats to Evette Atkin and the other superstars from the Michigan Library Consortium for getting the Branch District Library up and running on Evergreen without mishap. They give their own shoutout to Equinox for being great to work with. Yays all around.

The Michigan Library Consortium (MLC) is thrilled to announce that Branch District Library is our first Michigan Evergreen library to migrate to the open-source Evergreen software. Their new catalog is part of Michigan Evergreen, Michigan’s open-source ILS project. Migrations for the remaining Michigan Evergreen pilot libraries are scheduled for this fall.

[maintainIT]

is your library’s browser safe?

FreeGovInfo — whose guest blogger this month is none other than Ric Davis, acting Superintendent of Documents and Director of Library Services & Content Management at the U.S. GPO — points to a well-researchd report about vulnerable web browsers and the problems they pose. The article concludes that only 60% of web surfers use current versions of whatever browsing software they choose to use. This isn’t one of those “Hey, get Firefox!” articles, though it does point out that users of the Firefox browser are the most likely to be using a current version of the operating system — IE users are least likely — and part of the reason for this is that browser and plug-in version updating is built in to the system itself and turned ON by default. Read this article and then go make sure your library’s browsers are updated to the latest version. It’s important.

Understanding the nature of the threats against Web browser and their plug-in technologies is important for continued Internet usage. As more users and organizations depend upon these browser technologies to access ever more complex and distributed business applications, any threats to the underlying platform equate to a direct risk to business continuity and integrity.

woodshedding in libraryland

Summertime is the time I usually have off from travel and even from a lot of local library work. While I’m waiting for one of the teeny libraries I work with to give me a contract — helping with automation and ILL, check me out a real librarian — I’ve been doing a lot of reading and that thing we call “keeping current.” I will spare you the sad story of my recent hard drive crash, but suffice to say that recreating my digital life from scratch is TONS easier than it would have been a few years ago. That said, it’s not easy. I realized at some point that when I talk about woodshedding, people don’t always know what I mean so I will point you to the Urban Dictionary definition. That’s me, minus the weed and the banjo.

I think it’s hard, in our profession to both do our jobs and learn about doing our jobs. Unlike many jobs I’ve had — tech support being a notable one — working at a library is not always a great way to learn about working at a library. It’s a great way to learn to do your job, engage with your community and your content, and deliver the best services you can, but it’s not easy to meet other librarians, learn about the way they do their librarianing other places and share ideas. The web helps us with that. I think people like me who travel and tell stories about libraries in other places also help.

This is all just a long winded way of talking about WordPress, actually. Laura Crossett has put together a few little communities for librarians interested in learning about WordPress for libraries. While WP is blogging software, you can actually use it to simply run a small website. We use it for the Vermont Library Association and it’s allowed more members more access to content creation which I think has been very helpful. Here are the places she has created, if you’re WordPress curious, check them out.

Please consider checking them out and adding your knowledge, or experimenting with WordPress if you’re looking for a basic content management system or blogging tool for your library.

RIP Allen Smith, librarian and farrier

A very nice obit about Allen Smith, Simmons library school professor.

Allen was a fan of Webster’s Second (the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary, published in 1934), bow ties, motorcycles, and sailing. He abhorred exclamation points (one quote I have written in my notes from his class reads “If you were born before 1960, you have three exclamation points to use in your life; if born after 1960, you have six, because of inflation”).